Crimson Peak: Mia Wasikowska as Edith Cushing.

William Shakespeare (Mathew Baynton) is a self-doubting dreamer, who squanders his talent in a hard-strumming Elizabethan boy band called Mortal Coil.

He yearns to work in the theatre so he packs his knapsack, bids farewell to his wife Anne Hathaway (Martha Howe-Douglas) and heads to London, where he befriends Christopher Marlowe (Jim Howick).

The two men join forces on a play, which they intend to sell to The Earl Of Croydon (Simon Farnaby), who has promised a comical entertainment for Queen Elizabeth I (Helen McCrory).

She is blissfully unaware that King Philip II of Spain (Ben Willbond) is plotting to kill her. Thankfully, the Queen’s spymaster general Sir Francis Walsingham (Laurence Rickard) has a bulbous nose for trouble and sniffs out treachery in the ranks. Bill is an unabashedly silly romp from the creators of Horrible Histories and Yonderland, laden with cross-dressing, smut and the occasional documented fact.

Scripted by Rickard and Willbond, the film enthusiastically dons doublet and hose to run amok through the disease-ridden streets frequented by Oscar-winning romantic comedy Shakespeare In Love.

Production designer Simon Scullion and costume designer Charlotte Morris work tiny miracles on a limited budget to conjure a pungent vision of 16th century London replete with scheming, skulduggery and silly accents.

The cast’s energy is infectious and they frequently seem to be one smirk or snigger shy of corpsing en masse and ruining the take.

Humour remains just within the bounds of a PG certificate, including repeated appearances of a handheld torture device that is thrust where the sun doth not shine.